Project Placement and a Blogiversary

The river's dam is gorged with flying carp.  I follow the dirty downtown walk way.  I carry a notebook and black ink pen.  It looks like rain.

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It's summer on Sioux Court.  I'm grown and dating.  My boyfriend walks next to me.  I point to the house my father built before I was born and sold when I was 7.  It's gone from red to green.  I wave to Stell.  She doesn't know who I am.

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The railroad bridge is black against a gray sky.  The slightest pink edges the eastern horizon.

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A sparse treeline divides the corn field from the soy.  We find a knotty oak.  We climb rotting slats nailed to the trunk and sit closer than we should.

Places are as important as people.

This is Penny Jar, the blog I started one year ago today with the hope of finding the story inside the life.  I'm realizing that the stories I want to write and have been writing as of late are not memoir.  Oh, they do as most fiction does and careen in and out of reality like so many drunken sailors on shore leave, but they certainly can't fess up to their actions (like so many drunken sailors on shore leave).

That being said, I'm not ready to leave Penny Jar behind.  The examination of past events can be fascinating.  The examination of past places can be even more so, which is what brings me to the slices I have laid out so far.

Place.

You cannot hold a place, it holds you.

Often where you are is insignificant to an event or moment.  Later it may come back to you or you to it.  I'd like to experiment with short meditations on places, similar to the writing exercises from Old Friend from Far Away.

I don't know where they will end up, but it will be some place with a story to tell.

What are some places that call out to you?

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25 Things

This is kind of a lead in to an upcoming post.  Since I first wrote this list a few things have changed, but let's keep it simple.


From:  Friday, January 16, 2009 at 10:44am

1. The story I always come back to in life is that I am the youngest of nine children and I have been an Aunt since I was three.
2. My parents divorced when I was 7
3. Mike and I went to Burningman in 1998 and I hope someday we will be brave enough to take the kids
4. I love Facebook for bringing back people I thought were gone forever
5. I am very picky about movies I call my favorites and Harold and Maude is still at the top of the list.
6. Still use Big Mac’s quote, “Scare yourself” on a daily basis and thank him for giving me some balls
7. I do not attend church. I believe religion comes from the way life is lived.
8. I am a very crummy swimmer
9. When I was a child my favorite book was Richard Scary’s Best Word Book Ever.
10. That explains the obsession with giant dictionaries. I can cross reference for hours.
11. I want to read James Joyce’s Ulysses and have started three times
12. On November 4, 2008 I took my 72 year old mom to vote for the first time in her life
13. I am a book geek and have always been uncoordinated and non-athletic
14. I have spent years under the tutelage of supportive English teachers urging me to hone my craft and submit for publication, but I inevitably submit to laziness after the excitement wears off
15. Ivy, Azalea and Mike are the warm center the world crowds around
16. Tom Waits is my favorite lyricist. I have a soft spot for the dark and beautiful.
17. Two things that make me very happy are an excellent cup of coffee and Candinas Chocolate
18. We were the “freaks” in High School and started a cult.
19. I married a guy I knew and admired since I was 17.
20. We were married in the Redwood Forest with 6 witnesses. We honeymooned in an Oregon tree house.
21. At the park I always ride on the swing
22. Motherhood is the most important thing I have ever or will ever do
23. I started writing poetry when I was 10 because my parents never let me take music lessons. I was trying to write songs.
24. When I was in middle school I was obsessed with Poison. I know.
25. Places are as important as people.


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